University of Twente Student Theses

Improving materials management at a residential project

This report presents the results of the research done at Grupo Williams. The main objective of the research was
to asses and improve the materials management of Grupo Williams (GW) so that failure costs could be
reduced. To realize this objective the current materials management is analyzed, a codification system is
provided and a computer program is designed.
Materials management is an organizational concept in which a single manager has authority and responsibility
for all activities, principally concerned with the flow of materials into an organization. This system approach has
not been adopted and the various functions which are embraced by the definition are seen as separate
departments. The main thrust of the materials management concept is to avoid sub‐optimization and this is
missing to ensure the achievement of common objectives, system efficiency and effectiveness in the
organization of GW.
The factors of production are presented as inputs of process management. One of these factors is ‘materials’
and can be seen as the most important one because it consumes the biggest part of the total construction
costs. By following the flow of the ‘product’ the organization of GW is analyzed. By working with all the
departments concerning the materials procurement, the improvable areas per stage have become clear. Most
of these areas can be assigned to ‘materials’ as production factor. On basis of the theory, codification and a
materials management computer program have proven to resolve the biggest part of these problems.
The computer program is part of the most important function of management: planning. The planning decides
which materials are needed, when they are needed and the quantity of a certain material. A special
identification method pointed out that the inventory problems can be classified as ‘Materials Management
Planning’ (MRP). MRP systems meet their objective by computing requirements for each inventory item. To
find out if Materials management is applicable to the organization of GW a computer program based on the
MRP characteristics is designed. All the necessary inputs will result in a constant overview of the materials
inventory, the total amount of needed materials and the required materials per project. To present these
outputs all the departments have to process their specific inputs into the program.
For optimum usage of the computer program codification is required. In the current situation there is no
central catalogue with a identification of all the used materials. Creating this catalogue will resolve some of the
organization’s problems and makes it possible to use a computer program efficiently. The best codification
system for the organization of GW is the Brisch system. With preliminary grouping and further subdividing the
materials are described in as great detail as possible.
Ineffective inventory control is a major problem faced by companies in developing countries. Often the very
basic inventory control concepts and techniques are not even used by the majority of the companies. By
developing this materials management computer program and using this computer system on site at all the
projects GW can be pioneer in construction efficiency.